Character research counts

Yesterday’s general exhaustion continues, so no new words tonight–instead, I started listening to the album of tuba concertos I purchased from iTunes, just to see what it stirs up in the way of story ideas.

I’m finding that just jotting down notes about what the various pieces make me think of is a useful exercise. This, I think, will give me some concepts I can maybe work into my boy’s story somehow.

And I can definitely tell just by listening to the first four pieces on the album that one, a smoothly-played tuba actually sounds pretty awesome. Especially if the piece is an allegro one, which gives you deep, fast, runs of notes that can be evocative of something big moving very quickly. I’m finding myself thinking of bears, of avalanches in storms, of dolphins racing whales deep underwater. I need to listen to the rest of the album and maybe another one or two to know for sure, but I definitely find myself wondering if this story’s going be in a non-urban setting. (Which would sit well with me, given that I’m in the mood to avoid a lot of the tropes you find in urban fantasy right now, and writing a non-urban fantasy would be an excellent way to do that.)

Two, it’s kind of unfortunate that the particular recording I’m listening to has obvious places where the performer is hauling in a breath, but on the other hand, I expect that’s almost unavoidable given how much air you need to get through a tuba to get it to make decent music. This however tells me that my boy Oscar, whatever social skills and graces he may like, has excellent lung capacity. 😉 It also tells me that I totally want him to be able to play smoothly and liquidly, like several of the stretches of music I’m hearing on here.

(For those of you who are interested, the tracks I’ve listened to so far are three parts of a concerto by Edward Gregson, and now I’m working on a concerto by Roger Steptoe. The Vaughn Williams in F minor is on here, too; I’ll get to that.)

Three, listening to music in the name of character research rocks.

ETA: Correcting Vaughn Williams’ last name since both kathrynt and wrog have told me I got it wrong. Oops! Thanks, folks.

As Angela Highland, Angela is the writer of the Rebels of Adalonia epic fantasy series with Carina Press. As Angela Korra'ti, she writes the Free Court of Seattle urban fantasy series. She's also an amateur musician and devoted fan of Newfoundland and Quebecois traditional music.

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